title: Comments on "hydrodynamic and dispersion behavior in a non-porous silica monolith through fluid dynamic study of a computational mimic reconstructed from sub-micro-tomographic scans".
abstract: We comment on a recently published paper by Loh and Vasudevan [J. Chromatogr. A 1274 (2013) 65], which reported the physical reconstruction of the bulk macropore space of an analytical silica monolith by X-ray computed microtomography and the subsequent computational fluid dynamics simulations of flow and mass transport in the reconstructed monolith model. Loh and Vasudevan claim that their combined reconstruction and simulation approach offers a significant reduction of computational expenses without significant loss in accuracy in characterizing the macropore space heterogeneity of the monolith and predicting its transport properties. We challenge their claim and question the validity and validation of their results by discussing the employed scanning resolution, the characterization of macropore space heterogeneities, the interpretation of the simulated dispersion data, as well as the comparison of computational expenses with previous work.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Hans-Meerwein-Strasse, 35032 Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Dzmitry
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hlushkou
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Höltzel
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Tallarek
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / Q000379:methods*; D057446:Hydrodynamics; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D012822:Silicon Dioxide
keywords: Direct numerical simulation; Eddy dispersion; Heterogeneity length scales; Morphological analysis; Physical reconstruction; Silica monoliths